Use of Social Networks by People with Different Levels of Depression

The present study belongs to quite modern investigations of the relationship between social networking sites and personality traits. The general purpose of this work is to determine the nature of relationships between depression levels, personality traits and users' activity in the social network "VKontakte". Two types of data were collected using a specially designed social networking application: results of the NEO-FFI questionnaire and the Beck Depression Inventory, as well as information on user activity (a number of friends, subscribers, posts, audio and video recordings, photos, group and interesting pages subscriptions). 123 people has participated in the study. The data were processed using correlation, regression and comparative analysis. Hypotheses about differences in the principles of using social networks in people with different levels of depression and about making personality traits contribution to these differences have been partially confirmed. The study contributes to the accumulation of theoretical knowledge about the relationship between depression levels and parameters of using social networks on Russian-language samples, its results could be applied in the developing of depression diagnosis and prevention methods.